THE NEW YORKER Cabot Lodge, or left, as in Miss Per- kins, it tends, with banked fires and a due civility, to go the whole way. Until her freshman year in college, Frances Perkins exhibited no especial inclina- tion, right or left. In her early years, the Perkinses of Boston removed to the nearby manufacturing town of Worcester. Album pictures indicate that she was pretty, and she was by her own account articulate. She coun ted upon that in high school and passed as a model scholar without great toil. In 1898 she decided to pick her way among the easier courses afforded by Mount Holyoke College and to be a big woman on the campus. Two resolute lady faculty members discerned in her an intellectual comer .and took her in hand. Professor Esther Van Diemæ1, who taught Latin, accused her of sloth and glihness. Perkins, '02, wept. And': "The pounding impact of the intelligence of Nellie Esther Gold- thwaite," she has since recorded, "first aroused in me the consciousness of in- tellectuallife." Dr. Goldthwaite taught chemistry. Changing schedules, Miss Perkins took the hardest scientific - --.. ..---- ". . - ' - . :-.:::...:-:.......: ........_ - ; :'-';O ".::-_:.:. :'Ý"':'- '". .".:. .". : ::....::.. 0"' .. --.. Il r:e.. - -. . TpW.V ((We mustn)t see each other any more) ever.)) 17 those branches of. psychology of which even the terminology is not yet def- .. " InIte. W HEN she graduated from Mount Holyoke, a canning factory of- fered her an opening as analytic chem- ist. Her parents would not hear of their daughter's working, so she re- turned to Worcester to be a home girl, and stood it for more than three years. She took her pla e in Worcester society and in Episcopal church work, organ- izing classes of factory -w:orkers, carry- ing haskets to the improvident. In one factory a girl had her hand cut off in a candy-dipper. Frances Perkins took up the case. With the aid of the family clergyman, a price of one hundred dol- lars was finally put upon the girl's hand. Soon after that, Miss Perkins left h.ome and went to Chicago. Her first idea was to teach, but she soon switch- ed from that and for six months serv- ed Jane Addams of Hull House as a worker without pay. She had a little money and a gold watch, which she pawned. Wearing her tricorn hat, rough clothes, and not too sensible shoes, she trudged to inspect the tene- ments, abattoirs, and sweatshops of that filthy, fierce, and vital section of Chi- cago behind the yards. In 1907, a Philadelphia social agency hired her at forty dollars a month tu folluw up -- :..-:-.:::::....